It is not the least bit surprising to me that CH would provide misinformation on this subject. The original proposals for the 1999 code to require that use of AFCIs said that the device that they had then (remember proposals for the 99 code were due in early November, 1996) said that they had a device that could do what they now say the combination type AFCI can do. The combo device did not come on the market until 13 years after the first proposal.
I had a number of very heated discussions about the function of the original device on this very forum. When you started to dig into the real information back then you could find out what the original device could do...detect a parallel arc that had a current of 75 amps or more. I was not sold on the AFCIs then and I still am not.
Another issue touched on in this thread was the cost benefit of the device. I did some work on this issue using the same fire cause and origin information that the AFCI proponents used along with the housing start information from HUD. For compliance with the 2008 rule, I assumed an additional cost of $400 per dwelling unit.
If we had 100% compliance with the rule, we could expect to prevent 435 fires in the first year9this assumes that the AFCIs are 100% effective, something even the manufactures do not claim). Based on the expected number of housing starts, the cost to install the AFCIs in all of the new dwelling units would be a little over 638 million dollars. The cost to prevent each of those 435 fires would be a little over 1.5 million dollars.
Even after 20 years (will the AFCI still be functional then? remember they are not fail safe) the cost to prevent each fire will exceed $170,000.
